Philippe Petit - Turtleneck shirt, pants and shoes: Etro.

The first thing I notice upon arriving beneath a downpour at the country home of Philippe Petit is a steel cable stretched between two trees. The bucolic getaway of the world’s most famous tightrope walker obviously couldn’t be without a training set-up, and the century-old trees in this forest just a couple of hours outside New York seem made for such a purpose. Petit began challenging gravity by walking through the sky at the age of 16. He walked on cables strung between the spires of Notre Dame in Paris, between the pylons of a bridge in and between the buildings of Jerusalem.

His most famous performance dates back to 1974, when he connected the tops of New York’s Twin Towers and took a 45-minute high-wire stroll 1,200 feet above the ground. Since then he has done dozens of such stunts, and at age 63 he’s still in good enough form to be planning a new walk between the statues of Easter Island. “I train three hours a day, six days a week, and I feel like I’m at the peak of my career”, he confides after having invited me into his refuge, a small wooden house with walls covered in paintings and drawings of knotted rope.

To stay in shape Petit uses the cable strung between the trees, or when it’s too cold, or raining like today, he uses a stable next to the house that he built by hand, without electricity or modern tools. For him, regularly practicing the art of tightrope walking is particularly important. Petit never employs safety measures for his performances, so knowing his physical and mental limits means the difference between life and death.

“I’ve never even considered the idea of safety measures”, he assures me, as if surprised by the absurdity of the question. Even when his mentor, Rudolf Omankowsky, the great Czechoslovakian funambulist, advised him to hide a safety cord in his costume for the World Trade Center performance, Petit refused. “He said that no one from the ground would ever know. But I feel like I am half man and half bird, and no bird has ever flown on a leash”. This modern Icarus is small in stature, with a lean frame and well-groomed hands: muscular like those of a rock climber, agile like a magician’s.

In addition to his high-wire act, the Frenchman is also a juggler, magician, mountain climber and enthusiast for any form of DIY. His fingers are capable of tying and untying any knot with astonishing speed. After all, in his trade this is a fundamental skill, about which he authored a manual entitled “Why Knot?”, recently published in the US (Abrams Image). Petit personally designs and builds the various systems for securing the wires he walks on, and before every performance he obsessively inspects all the knots to ensure that they’re executed properly. This attention to detail has saved him more than once, noticing just in time little flaws that would have ruined his show, not to mention his life. This meticulousness is also reflected in his personal life, which makes him, by his own admission, “a bit of a control freak”.

His home is extremely neat, and every time I inadvertently move something on the table between us, Petit is quick to put it back in its place. “When I go to a restaurant, I must seem pathologically obsessive”, he admits, smiling. “I reorganize everything on the table, I study the disposition of the exits and make sure I’m sitting in a corner, or with my back to a wall”. Unlike many performers who come from the circus world, his isn’t superstitious. However, before every performance he always follows a specific ritual. There are certain objects – including a comb, a shoehorn, and a small wooden lion – that he brings with him and arranges just so in his dressing room, prohibiting anyone from touching them. And the last thing he does before leaving is to pass his hand over the lion. “In that moment my mind withdraws into a very deep reflective state, something like prayer”. These small rituals help reinforce the feeling of control over the situation while eliminating fear.

Petit claims he has never been afraid prior to a performance. If anything, dangerous undertakings stimulate him, rendering him immune to the perception of risk. “Sometimes the fear comes later, thinking about what I’ve just done”. Petit is an autodidact who believes in the importance of breaking the rules. His personal experience has taught him that, with commitment and constancy, even an absolute law like gravity can be successfully challenged. This has given him enormous self-confidence which, when he writes books or speaks in public, can come across as arrogance. In person, however, he presents a more sugarcoated version of himself, and his presumptuous attitude is compensated by his good manners and the contagious, magnetic power of his passions. To the point that, if it weren’t still pouring down rain outside, I would be tempted to ask if I could do what he occasionally allows visitors to do: walk behind him on the wire between the trees, keeping my balance with my hands on his shoulders.